Sometimes dreams don't translate well into reality

After today, I am thanking my lucky stars that we bought airplane tickets to Newfoundland. Dear husband and I had contemplated making the drive to Newfoundland. It would be a scenic trip, we reasoned. Darling daughter would absolutely love it, we thought. In my mind, I had visions of me reading copious amount of books while dear husband drove and darling daughter happily looked out the window, cloud gazing. But just like all my visions related to parenthood, my daydreams don't quite match up with reality. Case in point is my standard parenthood image involving dear husband and I lounging on our bed, while we gaze lovingly at darling daughter as she plays quietly between us. Yes, it is a lovely image in my head. But the reality is that darling daughter squirms a lot and loves to climbs and hang off the head board. We have no time to lounge as we are too busy making sure she doesn't fall and hurt herself.

Lately, darling daughter has had a real hate on for her car seat. Last week she cried all the way home during a 25 minute car ride. Today, she cried for an hour to my grandmother's house. She cried all the way home. However, that was our fault as we decided to make a stop into Wal-Mart and if we had just kept on going, she would have slept for the entire drive. Sadly, we forgot one of the golden rules of parenthood: don't wake a sleeping baby. But the allure of wide aisles and good bargains was too much to pass up. However, we did pay for it on the car ride home as she basically cried for about 45 minutes straight. Nothing I did could console her. The classic trick of letting her play and chew on her Robeez lasted for about 15 minutes before she tossed them aside in a fit of rage. I even made a make shift sock puppet out of her sock, but that got no laughs. Argh! If she can't last an hour into a car ride without crying, how could she ever survive a three day road trip?

Thankfully, we have used the common sense that God gave us and buy airline tickets. Dear husband told me today that he would like to make the drive out to Newfoundland. I understand, I said, but we will have to wait until she is older. How old? he asked. Probably when she is out of the house, I replied. Despite the crying, I don't think I can stand hearing "are we there, yet?" for three solid days.